Have you noticed how winter tiptoes in during the dead of night, quiet as a fog? You’re lulled to sleep by the soft plash of raindrops and wake to, surprise!, a stark, barren moonscape outside your window. If you can see through the frost.
Unlike a visit from Santa or the Tooth Fairy, though, it’s a rude awakening. Winter doesn’t bring gaily wrapped packages or cash money. It unloads snow and sleet, snarling traffic and disrupting lives for days at a stretch. Months. It’s a terrible, horrible, awful, very bad visitor.
No, back up. Visitor implies an invitation or a welcome (however begrudging). Tactless intruder is more like it. Winter shows up, ready or not, then proceeds to create an ungodly mess and make everyone miserable. Locking your door doesn’t help. Pretending you’re not home doesn’t help. Moving away, no forwarding address, useless. There’s nothing for it but to wait it out.
We’re sitting ducks. So pull up a chair and make yourself at home; we’re going to be here awhile. Most of December, plus all of January and February still await — there’s loads of time yet to kill. A good, long book is one option: War and Peace is the classic time suck. Infinite Jest or City on Fire are contemporary alternatives. The Internet, of course, is the mother of all time sucks. Find something, anything, to carry you through the cold, dark days ahead.
If you run out of stuff, twiddle your thumbs, whistle Dixie, or pull the covers over your head — my favorite. The thing to remember is, winter will end. It might not seem like it, but it will. The sun will shine, the snow will melt, and warmth will fill the land.
Heck, I’ll get a flamethrower if I have to. Because one way or another spring’s a-coming, I guaran-damn-tee it.
copyright © 2016 the whirly girl
the whirly girl 
17 responses to “: when autumn becomes winter :”
Nice personification of the weather … quite Dickensian! I feel a quote coming on, sorry …
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.
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Oh, my, how I wish I was even remotely Dickensian. His stuff is poetic and lyrical, just gorgeous. Who, but Dickens, could come up fog ‘hovering in the rigging of great ships’ or ‘cruelly pinching the toes and fingers’? My stuff is bald and severe, barely literate, by comparison.
Even so, I love the compliment. Thank you, thank you, and thank you some more, you sweet man.
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You are far too modest … your style really did remind me of Chas D.
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I’m flattered beyond words, but must wonder if you’ve been drinking. If you have, please, keep at it :o)
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Hic! ;)
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giggle, giggle, you are truly the best, Dave.
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OK, I confess it! I really am the, yeah, loads of my people say it, it’s gonna be the best best there’s ever, better than all the rest. No kidding.
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Those were my exact words!
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When I worked in Minneapolis City Hall, I loved to watch the bicycle messengers weave through two feet of snow in below zero temperatures (to my European friends – that is below -17). I never joined them because I made eight times what they made, but they had eight times as much fun as I.
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Don’t you think anyone who works outdoors in the midwest deserves hazard pay, overtime, and a six figure salary with twelve weeks paid vacation, and a parade in their honor every spring? Double that in Minnesota. Yikes, those people are heroes!
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Followed :)
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Welcome aboard! I hope you’ll enjoy the ride :o)
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Haha thanks! :)
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I love these photos you share – they sort of make me homesick.
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You should visit more often, everyone wonders why you don’t. Should I pencil you in for the Christmas Sing-a-Long?
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I recently discovered that the hotel usually visit accepts dogs on request. This will make it much easier in the future 🐶🐶
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Okay, there’s no excuse now. Except it’s still pretty much the same dull place, but there’s a trippy new coffee place downtown. In a totally great space. I camp there.
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